Weasure - A Scale that Weighs and Measures

2nd Prize - Renesas M16C Design Contest 2005

John Peterson
contact101 [at] saccade.com

Electronic scales are common today, and many of them easily
interface to PCs. However, for most commercial shipping services,
the weight alone isn't enough, they also want to know the physical
dimensions of the package.While you can get the weight directly
from the scale, measurements are still done by hand with a measuring
tape or yardstick. In a high volume shipping room with many different
package sizes, measuring and recording the package dimensions
adds several steps to the shipping process.

Weasure offers a "one-touch" solution to this problem.
Simply place the package on Weasure and both the weight and dimensions
are instantly displayed. By connecting Weasure to a PC's serial
port, this data is uploaded directly to the PC, where a shipping
application can send the measurements directly to the shipping
company's web site, further streamlining the process.

I was all set to run to the patent office with this idea, but
some research on the field (known as "dimensioners"
in the shipping trade) turned up the Mettler
ToledoCS5400, a very similar design. It's one of the most
useful gadgets I've built - I use it every time I ship a box.
The project won second place in the Renesas
M16C Design Contest. A detailed description of how it works
can be found here [PDF
390K] or the article
published in the June
2006 issue of Circuit
Cellar.